http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/ en Copyright 2008 Sat, 17 May 2008 05:41:26 -0500 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Robert Mondavi as Bacchus, with wife Margrit.
Photo: Avis Mandel for Pate International During the three years it took to research and write The House of Mondavi, I interviewed hundreds of people, pored through legal and corporate documents, and studied old photographs from high school yearbooks and other fragments of the past, searching for clues about Robert Mondavi’s character. Along the way, I gained an enormous respect for his passion, his perseverance, and his joie de vivre. I was lucky enough to have the last formal interview Robert Mondavi ever granted to a writer. Our meeting took place in a second floor conference room of the Robert Mondavi Winery in Oakville on March 29, 2005, nearly four months after the forced sale of the Robert Mondavi Corporation. Although the sale proceeds helped Mr. Mondavi fulfill his many philanthropic pledges, it also put him out of the wine business for the first time since the 1930s. It was a sad spring for Mr. Mondavi, then 91, and his wife Margrit and I left that interview feeling as if Robert Mondavi was already beginning to slip away.]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/05/robert_g_mondavi_19132008.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/05/robert_g_mondavi_19132008.html Family Business Food & Wine House of Mondavi Robert Mondavi wine Sat, 17 May 2008 05:41:26 -0500 President John F. Kennedy plays with children John. Jr., and Caroline in the Oval Office in October 1962, above, while below, his motorcade approaches Dealey Plaza in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Top photo from historyplace.com; bottom photo Walt Sisco, photographer/Courtesy The Dallas Morning News I can’t remember the last time I choked up with emotion while visiting a museum. But the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza in Dallas – which offers far more than just the preservation of historical artifacts behind glass cases – is an example of powerful storytelling about a tragedy that changed history. What unfolds there is a recounting of the November 22, 1963, assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald, an event that occurred when I was a toddler. Illustrating the ways in which multimedia storytelling is often so much more moving than print or broadcast alone, I used the audio tour to guide me through the exhibition. The audio tour’s spare, muscular prose was narrated by Pierce Allman, who was the first journalist to broadcast from the Texas Book Repository, where the assassin took aim at the motorcade below. On that day more than four decades ago, 200,000 people had gathered in the streets of Dallas to welcome the presidential party. One of them was dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruder, who filmed the convertible limousine that the President was riding in that day through the downtown streets with his 8 mm Bell & Howell movie camera. As the car passed directly beneath the Texas School Book Depository, shots rang out. The stills of these moments captured on Mr. Zapruder’s film are profound.]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/05/the_sixth_floor_museum_at_deal.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/05/the_sixth_floor_museum_at_deal.html The Writing Life journalism museums Thu, 15 May 2008 10:47:01 -0500 Tony Horwitz: His blog details the "voyage long and strange" that is a book tour.
Photo from voyagelongandstrange.com I hit a low point on my first tour for The House of Mondavi on one of those days that come so seldom to Chicago. It was last June and the weather felt balmy, with the last burst of spring blooms still on display. Who would want to sit indoors on an afternoon like that? Few did. At a bookstore known for its well-attended author events, only three people showed up (excluding my very patient Aunt Gene and Uncle Jack, who had sat through my book talk several times already.) I’d brought two bottles of wine – one from the Robert Mondavi winery and the other, a Charles Krug, from the Peter Mondavi side. That was my mistake: the warm weather, combined with the alcohol, literally lulled a third of my non-family audience to sleep. The book lover who come to my talk that day had her head thrown back, producing a soft, ladylike snore. ]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/05/book_tour_blues_as_sung_by_ton.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/05/book_tour_blues_as_sung_by_ton.html The Writing Life Book Tours Jeffrey Archer Ken Wells Tony Horowitz Writing Wed, 07 May 2008 15:45:08 -0500 Christina Meldrum I read the galleys of my friend Christina Meldrum’s stunning debut novel, Madapple, over a single, rainy afternoon a few months ago. I refused to get up off the couch, despite the requests of my husband and sons, until I’d finished the last page. What a book! I truly couldn’t put it down. Christina has written a gripping page-turner that explores the dichotomy between religion and science. Reading it, I felt as if I’d entered into a dream state where nothing was quite what it seemed. Christina began her book nearly a decade ago, while she was still working as a high-powered litigator at a big law firm’s San Francisco office. She would rise at five a.m. daily and write in the darkness of dawn for about an hour, her computer providing the only light, before heading to her San Francisco office. She had majored in religion as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, and then went on to Harvard’s storied Graduate School of Law. Although she had the drive and intelligence to be recruited as an associate by one of the top law firms in the world, Christina didn’t find what she was looking for in the practice of that profession. ]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/05/christina_meldrum_and_madapple.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/05/christina_meldrum_and_madapple.html Bay Area Book Scene The Writing Life Christina Meldrum Knopf Madapple Writing Tue, 06 May 2008 19:17:12 -0500 Above, an invitation to Burlingame's library fundraiser ...
Image from wincountrygetaways.com ... While in Salinas in 2004, readers protest "death of the libraries."
Photo from indymedia.org On Saturday, May 3, the Burlingame Public Library Foundation hosted a lunch that was as much about building community as it was about raising funds. As one of the organizers put it, the afternoon was an exercise in “friend-raising.” Michael Krasny, the host of the San Francisco Bay Area public radio station KQED’s Forum program, talked about his new book, Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life, published this year by Stanford University Press. Michael shared his often hilarious experiences interviewing everyone from Bill Clinton to the Merry Pranksters’ Ken Kesey, detailing the journey that took him from host of a show called “Beyond the Hot Tub” in swinging 1970’s Marin (the county north of San Francisco best known for hot tubs, peacock feathers, and the self-actualization movement EST) to “Bay Area cultural institution,” as author Michael Chabon describes him. Henry H. Neff, a teacher at the private San Francisco boys’ high school Stuart Hall, spoke about his experience writing The Tapestry, a series of young adult novels that our 10-year-old son, who’s anxiously awaiting the next installment, describes as “like Harry Potter, but even better.” Charming, funny, and articulate, Henry’s next book comes out this fall – news that our son was delighted to hear. ]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/05/friendraising_for_our_public_l_1.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/05/friendraising_for_our_public_l_1.html Bay Area Book Scene House of Mondavi Libraries MIchael Krasny reading St. Helena Public Library Mon, 05 May 2008 19:41:32 -0500 Michael Chiarello with guests at a past Bud Break Party (above) and with his own budding progeny, Aidan (below)
Photos from NapaStyle.com and ChiarelloFamilyVineyards.com Michael Chiarello is at home, making risotto alla primavera for 130 or so of the best customers of Chiarello Family Vineyards. He tastes a bit of the rice and parmesan cheese mixture, finds it to his liking, and orders it dished onto the scores of white plates which are laid out and waiting, where it will be topped off with a soffrito of spring vegetables. Wearing his white chef’s coat emblazed with a burgundy emblem signifying his kudos from the James Beard Foundation, he dashes out of his modern farmhouse-style St. Helena home, navigates around the swimming pool, and bounds down a few stone steps, to a 125-foot table set up in the vineyards where he and his wife Eileen are hosting a late-afternoon supper for their best customers in the vineyards. Barely pausing to say a few words to his guests, most of whom have bought a case or more of his wine to qualify for an invitation to join the day’s hospitality, he dashes back up the steps, towards the kitchen. “Now, now!” he snaps at the waiters ferrying plates of risotto to the table. The temperature in the vineyard hovers around 85 degrees, even at five in the afternoon, so there seems little risk of the dishes cooling down in the moments it takes to deliver them from kitchen to table. He’s paired the course with a 2006 Giana Zinfandel, named after one of his three daughters. ]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/just_a_guy_from_turlock_michae.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/just_a_guy_from_turlock_michae.html Food & Wine Chiarello Family Vineyards Entertaining family business Food James Beard Foundation Michael Chiarello NapaStyle Tra Vigne Wine Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:58:51 -0500 Kim Stare Wallace -- is she drinking a Meritage?
Photo from Dry Creek Vineyard As a newcomer to the wine world when I began The House of Mondavi, I discovered that its inhabitants spoke in a distinct language not so easily grasped by outsiders. When Michaela Rodeno, CEO of Napa Valley’s St. Supéry winery, first introduced me to the word “Meritage,” I had no idea what it meant. But she patiently explained it to me … almost, but not quite, concealing her surprise that I didn’t know it already. “Meritage” is an invented name that grew out of a national contest to come up with a way to describe blended wines. As so many other things in the wine industry, it was born out of a response to government regulations. In 1985, U.S. federal regulators restricted the wording used on wines containing less than 75% of a single grape variety to the not-very-elegant sounding “table wine,” rejecting such descriptors as “Bordeaux-blend.” ]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/meritage_wines_and_a_fascinati.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/meritage_wines_and_a_fascinati.html Family Business Food & Wine family business Kim Stare Wallace Meritage Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:59:46 -0500 The future of community?
Photo from smh.com.au (Sydney Morning Herald) Writing, by its nature, is a solitary undertaking. Reading, too, is done mostly on one’s own. So why not bring writers together with readers in a virtual community? Redroom.com is the one of several social networks devoted to the love of literature. Yet, it is pulling ahead in the race by attracting big names. Maya Angelou, Amy Tan, Jon Stewart, Salman Rushdie, and even Barack Obama are Redroom.com members. So are lesser known writers such as Belle Yang, author of The Odyssey of a Manchurian and Baba: A Return to China Upon My Father’s Shoulders; Bill Hayes, author of The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray’s Anatomy; and Peter Coyote, best known as an actor but also the author of Sleeping Where I Lie.]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/communities_virtual_and_otherw.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/communities_virtual_and_otherw.html Bay Area Book Scene The Writing Life Commonwealth Club David Ewing Duncan Ivory Madison Peter Coyote Redroom.com Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:50:34 -0500 Lunch in The Grotto
Photo from sfgrotto.org This month, I’ve been spending time at The Grotto, the famed San Francisco writers' community which is home to such West Coast literary luminaries as Po Bronson, David Ewing Duncan, ZZ Packer, Jason Roberts, Julia Scheeres, Ethan Watters, and many others. One of my favorite parts of making the trek to the Grotto’s offices on 2nd and Bryant Streets is lunchtime, when Grotto dwellers emerge from their offices, where they’ve been tapping away in the dim glow provided by their laptops, to gather in the brightly painted conference room for brown-bag lunches and conversation with other members of the tribe. It’s not unusual for guests to join Grottoites over lunch. On Monday, Van Jones, founder of Green for All and co-writers of a forthcoming book called The Green-Collar Economy, joined us. Van, who lives in Oakland, was recently a guest on The Colbert Report and admitted to having been flummoxed by his host’s comments (including one about “green” love machines and another about “unicorn herding”). That prompted Laura Fraser to share her experience of having to strip down to her knickers while her suit was being ironed prior to her appearance on one of the network morning shows.]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/grotto_dwelling.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/grotto_dwelling.html Bay Area Book Scene The Writing Life community The Grotto writing Mon, 21 Apr 2008 17:38:45 -0500 Harvard case studies probe for the veritas behind business decisions. The Harvard Business School has six case studiesMichael Porter, a Harvard professor who wrote The Competitive Advantage of Nations, a book that I read and found fascinating after being assigned it many years ago in business school. Although I wouldn’t recommend them as bedtime reading (unless you’re hoping to be lulled to sleep) I purchased them for $6.95 apiece and read each of them carefully as part of my research for The House of Mondavi. In particular, I found the study on the Mondavi’s adventure in Chile, and its creation of the Caliterra brand with the Chadwick's family, to be particularly helpful. My researcher and I found it fun and challenging to match the pseudonyms used in the study to the real executives I’d interviewed for my book. ]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/mondavi_as_a_case_study_1.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/mondavi_as_a_case_study_1.html Family Business Food & Wine family business Harvard Business School House of Mondavi succession planning Thu, 17 Apr 2008 12:15:25 -0500 Gareth Blackstock, aka Lenny Henry
Photo from Siegler.net Some people find gardening shows relaxing. Others love watching playful otters frolic with each other in nature documentaries. Give me the red meat and raw savagery of the kitchen anytime. First, I tore through Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential, which I found hugely enjoyable and not a little bit scary. I’m assured by his longtime spokeswoman, Rosemarie Morse, that these days it’s safe to order fish in restaurants on Monday. In recent weeks, I began watching the BBC series from the 1990s called “Chef!,” starring the British comedian Lenny Henry as the character Gareth Blackstock, a chef in a two-Michelin starred restaurant in the fictional Le Chateau Anglais in the English countryside.]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/yes_chef.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/yes_chef.html Food & Wine Food Television Wine Fri, 11 Apr 2008 09:45:52 -0500 The Palazzo Antinori in Florence, Italy. Imagine a family business that has passed from one generation to the next twenty-six times, surviving everything from the scourge of Bubonic plague, to the invasion of Napoleon, two world wars, and even the birth and death of the wine cooler. The Wall Street Journal’s deputy bureau chief for Southern Europe, Gabriel Kahn, profiled such an enterprise in a fascinating story this weekend: “For more than six centuries, the Antinori family has managed one of the most delicate feats in business: passing on a company from one generation to the next,” he writes. Succession planning is one of the obstacles that trips up so many family businesses, leading the vast majority to break up, fail, or pass out of family hands by the third generation. Italy’s storied Antinori family, which now owns wineries in Tuscany, Napa Valley, Hungary, and Chile, is a remarkable exception. “This is not textbook management,” notes Harvard’s John A. Davis in the article. “Some of its planning, some of it is just luck.” Even so, the success of the Antinoris has made them into a fascinating case study for other vintners, including Napa Valley’s H. William Harlan II, the founder of Harlan Estate.]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/twentysix_generationsand_count_1.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/twentysix_generationsand_count_1.html Family Business Food & Wine Antinori family business succession planning wine Wed, 09 Apr 2008 03:00:16 -0500 California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger greets Margrit and Robert Mondavi at the December ceremony inducting Robert into California's Hall of Fame.
AP Photo by Steve Yeater One of the questions I’m often asked when I talk at library fundraisers or with book groups about The House of Mondavi is how Robert Mondavi is doing. Still referred to respectfully as “Mr.” by some of his former employees, Robert Mondavi will celebrate his 95th birthday on June 14th of this year. But it’s unlikely to resemble the birthday parties of decades past – such as at the one to celebrate his 85th birthday in 1998. “Mr.” donned sunglasses, burst onto the stage, and started jamming with the band. Since the takeover of the Robert Mondavi Corp. in late 2004, he’s had a series of health scares resulting in trips to the hospital. And although he and his wife Margrit still attend many functions and can be spotted dining out at restaurants such as Redd in Yountville, Mr. Mondavi is now confined to a wheelchair and doesn’t say much anymore.]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/the_aging_king_of_the_napa_val.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/the_aging_king_of_the_napa_val.html Family Business Food & Wine House of Mondavi James Laube Margrit Mondavi Robert Mondavi Mon, 07 Apr 2008 10:28:58 -0500 Suggested wine pairing? Ask the go-to guy.
Photo by justinsomnia.org Alder Yarrow and I had lunch together today at Taylor’s Automatic Refresher at San Francisco’s Ferry Building. After noting the $100-plus bottles of Shafer Hillside Select, Quintessa, and Blackbird Vineyards wines on offer at a take-out place that serves $8.99 burgers and $3.99 hotdogs wrapped in paper, Alder modestly mentioned that he’d just heard that morning that his brainchild, Vinography, had been named the best overall wine blog in 2008 by Tom Wark’s American Wine Blog Awards. I started reading Vinography a few years ago after meeting Alder at the very first Symposium for Professional Wine Writers in 2006. We were both participants then; Alder has gone on to be one of the most generous and well-liked speakers at the 2007 and 2008 Symposiums. A corporate web designer and consultant during the day, Alder started Vinography in 2004 after realizing he had become the “go-to guy” for his friends who wanted wine or restaurant recommendations in the San Francisco Bay Area.]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/vinography_2008_best_wine_blog_1.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/04/vinography_2008_best_wine_blog_1.html Bay Area Book Scene Food & Wine The Writing Life Alder Yarrow Dan Wark Rochioli Vinography Williams Selyem Wine Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:19:41 -0500 After a quiet lunch in Rutherford yesterday, I drove back home along the Silverado Trail. As rain droplets began hitting my windshield, I passed the modest sign for the winery whose founder, to me, is an almost perfect example of the idealism of many of the early vintners who came to Napa Valley, searching for an Arcadian life. Warren Winiarski gave up his job as a lecturer at the University of Chicago, packed up his family in their station wagon, and moved to Napa Valley to begin again as a winemaker. After a short stint at Souverain Cellars, he joined the new Robert Mondavi Winery, working through the first two crushes in 1966 and 1967 before starting a winery of his own on Howell Mountain.]]> http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/03/the_poetfarmer_of_the_napa_val.html http://www.juliaflynnsiler.com/blog/2008/03/the_poetfarmer_of_the_napa_val.html Family Business Food & Wine House of Mondavi Piero Antinori Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Warren Winiarski Wine Sun, 30 Mar 2008 17:52:37 -0500